Read Online The Rainbow Troops by Andrea Hirata - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Andrea Hirata
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percentage of the catch but was paid based on his physical strength. He was a man making a living by selling his bodily power.
Lintang could only study late at night. Because the house was so crowded, it was difficult to find an empty space, and they had to share the oil lantern. However, once he grasped the book, his mind escaped the cracks of the leaning bark walls. Studying was entertainment that made him forget life's hardships. For him, books were like water from a sacred well in Mecca's mosque, renewing his strength to pedal against the wind day after day. He immersed himself in each sentence he read. He was seduced by the eloquent writings of scholars. He recognized the hidden meanings in formulas that didn't register with others.
Then on one magical night, under the twilight of the oil lamp and accompanied by the waves of the tide, Lintang's thin fingers paged through a photocopied version of an archaic book titled Astronomy and Geometry . All at once, he was immersed in the defiant words of Galileo against Aristotle's cosmology. He was entranced by the crazy ideas of the ancient astronomers who wanted to measure the distance from the earth to Andromeda and the Triangulum's nebulas. He gasped when he found out that gravity can bend light. He was amazed by the roving objects of the skies in the dark corners of the universe that may have only been visited by the thoughts of Nicolaus Copernicus.
When he reached the chapters on geometry, Lintang smiled cheerfully because his logic so easily followed mathematical simulations of various dimensions and space. He quickly mastered the extraordinarily complicated tetrahedral decomposition, direction axioms and the Pythagorean theorems. This material was way beyond his age and education, but he mused over the fascinating information. He contemplated the information in the dim circle of light provided by the oil lamp, and right at that moment, in the dead of the night, his contemplation exploded and he observed something magical happening on the old pages in front of his face. Each number and letter squirmed about and then lit up, transforming into fireflies buzzing around him and then penetrating his mind. He had no idea that at that moment the spirits of the pioneers of geometry were grinning at him. Copernicus, Lucretius and Isaac Newton were sitting down beside him. In a very small, narrow shack of a very poor Malay family on the edge of nowhere far off on the seashore, a natural genius was born.
The next day at school, Lintang was puzzled to see us confused about a three-digit coordinate exercise.
What are these village kids so confused about? said the voice in his heart.
Just as stupidity often goes unrealized, some people are often unaware that they have been chosen, destined by God to be betrothed to knowledge.
Chapter 10
Twice a Hero
NOW, THIS happened during the month of August—always a bad news month.
One problem after another struck our school. For years, financial difficulty was our constant companion, day in and day out. Plus, people always assumed our school would collapse within a matter of weeks.
However, we were able to hold on, thanks to the winds of determination blown our way every day by Bu Mus and Pak Harfan. We came to see school as the best thing that could have happened to us—it was much better than becoming coolies, coconut graters, shepherds, pepper pickers or shop guards.
The difficulties came in waves, but we never took even one step back—in fact we became more immune. We were living proof of the proverb "What doesn't kill you will only make you stronger." And while our class still had only ten students, after a few years of no new enrollees, we finally had some underclassmen—their numbers were small, but there they were.
Yet there was no ordeal as difficult as this one.
An old DKW motorbike with a sputtering exhaust pipe slid toward our school. Uh-oh. He's here again.
The driver of the DKW was an older man with thick
Lintang could only study late at night. Because the house was so crowded, it was difficult to find an empty space, and they had to share the oil lantern. However, once he grasped the book, his mind escaped the cracks of the leaning bark walls. Studying was entertainment that made him forget life's hardships. For him, books were like water from a sacred well in Mecca's mosque, renewing his strength to pedal against the wind day after day. He immersed himself in each sentence he read. He was seduced by the eloquent writings of scholars. He recognized the hidden meanings in formulas that didn't register with others.
Then on one magical night, under the twilight of the oil lamp and accompanied by the waves of the tide, Lintang's thin fingers paged through a photocopied version of an archaic book titled Astronomy and Geometry . All at once, he was immersed in the defiant words of Galileo against Aristotle's cosmology. He was entranced by the crazy ideas of the ancient astronomers who wanted to measure the distance from the earth to Andromeda and the Triangulum's nebulas. He gasped when he found out that gravity can bend light. He was amazed by the roving objects of the skies in the dark corners of the universe that may have only been visited by the thoughts of Nicolaus Copernicus.
When he reached the chapters on geometry, Lintang smiled cheerfully because his logic so easily followed mathematical simulations of various dimensions and space. He quickly mastered the extraordinarily complicated tetrahedral decomposition, direction axioms and the Pythagorean theorems. This material was way beyond his age and education, but he mused over the fascinating information. He contemplated the information in the dim circle of light provided by the oil lamp, and right at that moment, in the dead of the night, his contemplation exploded and he observed something magical happening on the old pages in front of his face. Each number and letter squirmed about and then lit up, transforming into fireflies buzzing around him and then penetrating his mind. He had no idea that at that moment the spirits of the pioneers of geometry were grinning at him. Copernicus, Lucretius and Isaac Newton were sitting down beside him. In a very small, narrow shack of a very poor Malay family on the edge of nowhere far off on the seashore, a natural genius was born.
The next day at school, Lintang was puzzled to see us confused about a three-digit coordinate exercise.
What are these village kids so confused about? said the voice in his heart.
Just as stupidity often goes unrealized, some people are often unaware that they have been chosen, destined by God to be betrothed to knowledge.
Chapter 10
Twice a Hero
NOW, THIS happened during the month of August—always a bad news month.
One problem after another struck our school. For years, financial difficulty was our constant companion, day in and day out. Plus, people always assumed our school would collapse within a matter of weeks.
However, we were able to hold on, thanks to the winds of determination blown our way every day by Bu Mus and Pak Harfan. We came to see school as the best thing that could have happened to us—it was much better than becoming coolies, coconut graters, shepherds, pepper pickers or shop guards.
The difficulties came in waves, but we never took even one step back—in fact we became more immune. We were living proof of the proverb "What doesn't kill you will only make you stronger." And while our class still had only ten students, after a few years of no new enrollees, we finally had some underclassmen—their numbers were small, but there they were.
Yet there was no ordeal as difficult as this one.
An old DKW motorbike with a sputtering exhaust pipe slid toward our school. Uh-oh. He's here again.
The driver of the DKW was an older man with thick
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